I bought apples.  To make a German apple pancake.  And sure, I could make it tomorrow.  But I wanted it THEN.

We compromised: I had leftover buttermilk from last week’s biscuits and I had a waffle recipe I hadn’t tried before because of my consistent lack of buttermilk.  He agreed to the waffles.

But I chopped up an apple anyway.  I put a whole lot of butter in a frying pan and let it melt and threw in the apples to cook them down a little.  Then I added some brown sugar, corn syrup, and milk, thinking I’d make caramel sauce for my waffles.  He could have his boring old store brand imitation maple syrup if he wanted it.  My breakfast was going to be AWESOME.

My caramel never did develop a nice caramel-y consistency.  This may be due to a few factors – I didn’t actually measure anything, so the proportions may not have been right… or, it could be because I started the apples in the butter and the acid from the apples kept it from doing what I expected.

EITHER WAY – I recommend you do this SOON.

It tasted caramel-y but with an awesome sour apple ZING to it.  I topped my waffles with a few pieces of apples and drizzled this sauce ALL OVER.

I’m going to get so fat.

Even the boyfriend gave in and tried some even though he “just wasn’t in the mood for apples.”  And he said,

“Okay.  You were right.”

And thus concludes today’s breakfast adventure.

When I moved in with my new roomie in July, it was understood that her dog may come to stay with us now and then (he technically lives with her parents on the other side of the state).  I was apprehensive about it because believe it or not, my family has never had pets.  Except fish.  One time my dad put the wrong fish together in the tank and one ate the other one.  It was sort of awesome.  But nothing that could run around the house and shed and jump on you and scratch and be all around a big ball of its own energy.

This guy has been with us for a few weeks now, and I could totally do without the hair.  It’s in my room!  How?!  The dog is NEVER in my room!  But other than that, I totally love him.

Not sure how long he’s staying but… I’m fine with him for now.  He’s kind of nice, I guess.

I’ve been friends with Preston since sophomore year of college, which I’m slowly realizing is actually quite some time ago.  We were both going to school in North Dakota and were in and out of some of the same buildings and classes.  I always knew he was someone to admire but kind of thought him as Out Of My League, even on the most basic level.

One day, though, he overheard me talking to our jazz band director about an audition I was hoping to do down here in Nashville, and our friendship was like instant super glue from that point forward.

He’s a fiddle player.  A damn fine fiddle player.  He works his ass off and had been working his ass off since, let’s be honest, before he even started preschool.

He moved down here before I did, but honestly, I may not have made it if not for him.  He was the one calling every other week asking what my plans were, excited for me to experience all the things he was experiencing.  I finished school up North, he came down here to finish school, and in the mean time he started recording and playing in bands and all around being awesome.

He called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that he was finally making an appearance in town for the first time in months, and I was welcome to come see him play if I wanted.  With Carrie Hassler.  At the Station Inn.

(yeah, he’s in those videos.)

I don’t go to the Station Inn much anymore which is a shame because, oh boy, the music there is never a disappointment.  It was especially special last night, though, knowing one of my best friends was up there, and realizing how far he’s truly come.

My dreams have been put on hold for some time, maybe even completely reconsidered.  I don’t know that seeing him up there reinspired anything in me, necessarily…

But it did remind me that no matter what I decide I want… anything is possible.

I had been blogging since before I knew what blogging was, had relatively recently found 20SB, and he was, at the time, one of the few dudes registered and blogging.  A guy?  With a blog?  Yeah, of course I was reading that.

It wasn’t long before I realized his verbal fluidity and eloquence made him more than just a guy with a blog.

This is all a story I’ve told before, but I’ll say it again for this point’s sake – I moved to Tennessee from Minnesota and after some flirting via twitter, I emailed him one day, asking if I could sleep on his couch, in Chicago, on the way.

And he said yes.

I had a mild crush on him then.  Meeting him in person solidified my fascinations.  Leaving him that next morning ignited rocket fuel in my imagination.

Did I have feelings for Derek?  Oh, yes.  But I would say 20% of them were genuine I’m-interested-in-getting-to-know-you-and-find-you-incredible feelings, and the other 80% were emotional survival.

Being in a new place, knowing almost no one, and knowing deep down the very definition of who I’d always considered myself to be was about to be drastically altered forever and having no idea how to handle that coming revelation… it was terrifying.  People told me I was brave and looking back on it, I know I was… but I didn’t feel that way then and clung to the one piece of my childhood and adolescence that was safe and comfortable, if not a little heartbreaking – unrequited love.

It was a beautiful distraction, and I held on to it for dear life.

I went back to Chicago a few months later and my feelings were painfully obvious to everyone.  The problem with holding on to one comfortable thing from your childhood is that it then causes you to act like the child you used to be.  I was not a woman, not in that sense, and should have never expected him to see me like one.  I don’t think I did expect it.  But I certainly hoped.

In the end, no actual words were exchanged to this effect, but it wasn’t more than a week or two after I’d returned home to my frustrating, insignificant existence that I had to write to him and make my thoughts known.

And he very obligingly and gently told me he was not interested.

And that was it.  A few weeks later I met Brandon.  A few weeks after that faded out I met Andrew.  And the night I had decided to give up on Andrew for good, the infamous Ryan entered my life.

Derek set the bar high.  So high.  Derek ran a business, Derek understood literature and music and went to one of the best schools and excelled at everything he’d done from soccer to human connection.

But Derek wasn’t real.

When Ryan came along, he was all the things I knew I wanted because I’d wanted Derek, with all of the right things just slightly differentiated.  Ryan was HERE, mostly, and with me, everything else was just… right.

To put Derek and Ryan next to each other and call them similar… well… you wouldn’t believe me if I did.  But they are.

So moving past Ryan should be just as easy as moving past Derek was… but it’s not.  Because Ryan was here.  Ryan was real.  And I don’t know if Ryan ever raised the bar beyond where Derek set it, but he certainly rose to it.

I had a funny thought just a bit ago… the reason I started to write all of this down.

If anyone could ever save me from Ryan… of all the men I know and have ever known, only one comes to mind I’m absolutely sure could succeed.  Derek.

But there will never be an emotional savior again.  No distractions.  I’m not a child anymore.
I need the real thing.

And before I knew it he was saying I could be his, if I wanted to be, and I was saying I did. 

It was simple. 

It was sweet.

I’m so used to being left alone for days at a time.  For being the one who has to do the chasing, the phone calling, the suggesting, the seeking.  I’m used to wanting more and sometimes getting it and being completely satisfied but mostly not and logically explaining it away.  I understand how I feel in those moments because I know I want something simply because I can’t have it.

This is different.  He never leaves me wanting anything.  Wishing for anything.  Hoping that a little more time fix things. 

Now, there’s just nothing to fix.  Sure, it’s still early, and sure, things could still change. And I don’t exactly know how I feel because… well… it doesn’t hurt.  But what I do know is I know I’ve never been so lucky, or treated so well, or…

Been so speechless.

So that’s what’s going on with me.  How ’bout you?

We broke it off “for good” in July.  You can ask my brother, because he was in the house with me.  You can ask my mom, who listened to me cry harder than I’ve ever cried before.  You can ask the friends I work with, who saw first hand that I just did not handle it well.  I didn’t eat.  All I did was sleep.  Watch episode after episode of Dexter, or Veronica Mars.  I was so miserable one morning that I called in sick to work and laid in bed eating popsicles all day.

I wasn’t okay without him… not because I needed him to be myself, but because I loved him and I needed somewhere for that love to go and I knew that no one would ever be him again.  No one.

Things weren’t going the way I wanted and things weren’t going the way he wanted and I don’t know which way either of us wanted, but all we could tell was that we were looking around and neither one of us liked the view.

So I cried and he avoided me and he dated other girls and I spent time with friends I didn’t used to spend a whole lot of time with.  I developed a crush which looked like it had potential to everyone who saw it happen, and in the end, it was over before it really began.

And by the time that was over, Ryan and I were talking again.

I wrote him a big book of letters which I planned to give him.  I bought a big cardboard hatbox and painted it and decorated it with construction paper and poetic words and I filled it with things that reminded me of him – a new zip up sweater, a season of his favorite show on DVD, a CD I thought he might like, and pictures of us.  I never gave him the letters because I’d ended up saying most of the important stuff out loud, but as we were sitting on my bed just a few nights before the one year anniversary of the night we met, I decided there was no time like the present and I picked the box up off the floor where it had been sitting and I handed it to him and said, “This is for you.”

And as he went through it, his expression softened, and voice became quiet, and his eyes glimmered in the lamp light.

The Ryan I knew and loved was back, just like that.

That night before he left, he kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “I’ll be seeing you.”

We had broken up one other time, only for a few weeks, and when we were on the phone that Valentine’s Day night more or less making up, he said in that exact same tone of voice, “I’ll be calling you.”

And I guess that’s how I knew.

So we’ve done this twice before, and both times it ended the same way… both of us getting frustrated because we weren’t really understanding each other… or we were understanding each other and just being selfish and believing the wrong one of us was right.

Neither one of us was right.

This time, we never had the talk.  We’re not really “back together,” in so many words.  Neither one of us is seeing anyone else… neither one of us is saying we can’t.  He doesn’t ever avoid my phone calls anymore, and I’ve gotten better at reading the signals that say “I need space.”  I give it to him, because it’s not just about me.  He comes to things I’ve invited him to, he lets me sleep next to him, and sometimes, he lets me hold his hand.  He comes when I need him, and for the first time in over a year of knowing him, last night he let me drive out to his place and cook him dinner while he was rolling around feverishly on his couch, sick.  He tells people he’s dating someone, sometimes… usually not anybody important… but that’s something I understand and won’t expound upon… because that’s his business.  You know?  I really don’t care.  I like spending time with him and I don’t care who he wants to tell or who he doesn’t.

This may or may not turn into something “real” at some future point, and I guess in the past I’ve been worried about wasting time.  But, you know, I’ve never been one to go out looking for love anyway, so the way I see it, if there IS somebody else I’m supposed to be with, he’ll happen along whether or not I’m spending time with Ryan… and I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I know that this could be over tomorrow… and I think that’s why it’s working this time.  He doesn’t feel pressured, and I don’t expect too much.  It might be over tomorrow.

We can just enjoy today.

I’m happy.  I’m calm.  I’m not so impatient for some undefined event to take place.

And sometimes I feel as though I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything… or ever will.

And so I will tell you one more thing, and this is the straight up truth.

If he showed up at my door tonight with two plane tickets to Vegas and a pawn shop ring in his pocket…

I’d be his in a heartbeat.

I mean, probably, although most choices kind of just blend into life and the person you are, rather than becoming moments you look back on and say, “Man, if I had just skipped the garlic bread that night, he’d have kissed me and we’d be married.  NOW LOOK AT WHERE I AM! Loney… pathetic… alone…

ALL. BECAUSE. OF GARLIC BREAD.“

I was just thinking about that this morning, after an incredible Thursday night that my brain still won’t let take a rest.  I made plenty of decisions that night that, I think, at least in the very end I won’t be able to say “what if” about.  I like that.

So I was talking music with this guy who knows music like I know music and my guitar came up and suddenly, I couldn’t concentrate on the subject matter at hand, and it’s really been bothering me ever since.

Because when I was about four years old my dad bought my mom a guitar for Christmas and being the good dad that he was, decided to involve me in the decision making process so the gift would really be from both of us.

Now, obviously, as a four year old I knew pretty much nothing about guitars.  I’m not sure I knew that he was actually buying a guitar.  But he did let me make one choice.

What color is the inside of that guitar case going to be?

Guys, my dad bought my mom another guitar while I was in high school and I inherited the first guitar.  A gorgeous Gibson J-40, made in Montana.  I can’t hate on that.

But now, TWENTY YEARS LATER, I am still living with that decision.

I get to live with this guitar case for the rest of whose ever life makes it longer.

Thanks four-year-old Courtney.
I like hot pink, too.

.

.

.

On a related note,

Almost 20 years ago, my best friend’s mom asked her who she wanted to come to her birthday sleepover, her very first birthday sleepover ever.

She answered,
“That Courtney Girl.”

I’m going to pick That Michelle Girl up from the airport in about seven hours.

The choices we make as kids are some of the best ever, I’d say.

20 minutes later something is still telling me to call.  I do.

The phone rings a ridiculously long time.  Voice mail picks up.  It’s the default automated message, not the slightly uptight, way-too-professional one I’m so used to hearing.

I burst into tears… not because he let my call go to voice mail, no, but because in the year (almost) that I’ve known him, he’s NEVER had his voice mail set to default.

First thing that runs through my mind: DID HE CHANGE HIS NUMBER WITHOUT TELLING ME?!

God only knows, because I had to scroll down through countless calls to find his number in my call history.  The date was early last month.  It’s been awhile.  He’s definitely had time to pull it, and maybe he doesn’t even know how cool I’ve really been playing it because he didn’t give me the chance to play cool.

I look at my gas level.  Ugh.  I need more.

Stop at the first run down place with a name I recognize, fill up, keep driving.

Mistake the house next to his for his.  Cars I don’t recognize.  Cars built this century.  Agggggh, if someone else is here, I might have to turn around and go home.

Oh. Shit.  No.  That’s his van and there are his cars.  Wrong house, right house.  I’m pulling in.

He’s right there.  He doesn’t see me.

Hmmmm.

I wonder how long it will take him to notice that there’s an extra car and an extra person in his driveway.

No…

No…

Aggh.

Walk walk walk.

“Hey! What’s up?”

So nothing’s wrong?

“You certainly don’t look dressed for it, but you wanna help?”

….

I spent my night scrubbing white walled tires and talking about the kinds of guys who buy which cars.

It doesn’t mean much in the end except…

He didn’t change his number on me and we really still can be friends.

Eventually.

What I fail to mention in this lengthy recount is that one night, after a lovely day of rehearsal and silliness together before our senior recital, a day in which some real chemistry was beginning to develop that neither of us would outwardly acknowledge, I stood out under a black, star speckled sky, and I prayed like mad to The One who had marvelously put that sky together.  If He was capable of that, why then, He was capable of Anything.

I asked God to please, whatever he did, however long it took, however long he could make it last, let me have Ryan.  Just once.  Just for a little while, if that’s all that he could do.  But I needed to know the magic of kissing this boy.

I’d spent years being interested in him.  It wasn’t any sort of constant longing or terrible obsession.  It was just a healthy sort of possibility that always lived in the back of my head.  And that day had thrown that possibility right back up to the front of my brain —  but the timing was terribly off and I think we both knew it.  So I asked what I asked, and I put it in God’s hands and I LET GO.

And as we all know now, I got my prayer answered in the most lovely, magical way.

He was my first Ryan, and there was another Ryan thrown in there in the middle somewhere, and now, we all know, I’m still in the process of ripping the latest Ryan out of my heart.

I’ve got a notebook I’ve been keeping full of letters.

I might be stronger.  I might be fine.  I might never get this boy back.  But I started writing these letters in this book with the sole purpose of one day delivering them, and on that point, I am not backing down.  Call it a last ditch effort.  Call it following my gut.  Call it tempting fate.  Whatever it is, I know this is something I’m meant to do.

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down with that notebook and once again, I told the story of Ryan.  My first Ryan, to my last Ryan.

I told him about the prayer.  I told him about the answer.   And I told him that my intuition doesn’t tend to let me down.

And I told him I’m letting go and I’m praying and I’m having faith that God knows what He’s doing.

And if I’m right, this isn’t the end.

I mean, you guys can think I’m in denial all you want.  I know Ryan does.  I know he doesn’t think he’ll ever have feelings for me again.

He knows his past.  But I know my past and I know my intuition and I know my God.

If having faith is crazy and wrong, so be it.

But I do.

MEN.
UGH.

The biggest lament, though, was all the social standards that we feel like we need to adhere to.  For example, why is it that when a girl and a guy break up and the guy is the one who thinks it’s a big mistake, he has all of these tools available to him to help him change her mind?  Who ever heard of a dude who found it totally romantic to get flowers at his desk every day at work?

Let’s just say I know that wouldn’t work in my current situation. 

But listen.  I will never explain my situation satisfactorily to anyone, and it became apparent to me one day when he asked, “Do your friends and family think I’m an asshole?” and I had to wonder… do they?, that maybe it’s unfair to try to explain it.  I’m the one who knows myself, knows this situation, and knows him.  Yes, it has hurt like hell, and yes, I’ve definitely needed a shoulder or five to cry on over the past weeks…

But I still love him and I still think the world of him.  There is no black or white here.

And if there is no black or white… if nobody but the two of us are ever really going to understand (not that I don’t have some friends who have been AWESOME and totally In The Same Boat… that’s not it, but still… it was our relationship, not anybody else’s) then why should I have to follow these imaginary rules made up for… who?  And by who? 

Who says I can’t do whatever is in my power to do to make this complicated, foggy situation work out the way I want it to?

I know.  I’ve been through this enough to know that it nearly never works that way.  I know that moving on might just be the easiest thing for all of us.  But I have this FAITH that there’s still more of this story to tell. 

It’s going to be a fantastic love story.  I’m going to fight for it.   Gather all the faith I can find.  Do anything I can to make him believe in us.  I know that not every story has a happy ending but…

I don’t think this one has ended at all.  Not quite yet.

So I’ve got a plan.

And I’m gonna break the rules to carry it through.